Leaked data reveals Israeli govt campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Meta

So when the government pointed to the disproportionate support for Palestine on TikTok vs Instagram, it was actually because Instagram was suppressing it. It is ironic.

https://x.com/hawleymo/status/1717505662601609401

Another reason why TikTok has to come under US ownership. How else are we going to censor things when they are under China’s (lack of) control?

And conversely, another reason why Trump's tariffs on China are a bone-headed move. They are not going to sell TikTok while the tariffs last, and the popular demand for it makes banning it a non-starter.

Yes. This was clearly the reason for the ban in the first place.

Exactly. China demands Apple Maps be ran on Chinese servers by Chinese workers. I would expect current U.S. administration to be frustrated with these imbalances as surveillance state measures increase. These imbalances were less important when there was less interest in information and truth suppression.

At least for all the surveillance the Chinese do - the standard of life is improving overall. We don't even get that shit here in the US. Our life just gets worse by practically every measure as the years go on and we're taken advantage of on top of it.

What benchmark are you using for standard of life?

Number of citizens reeducated, I presume.

While this may be part of the story, it's certainly not the full picture. We know that the CCP is actively manipulating the algorithm on Tiktok to further their agenda on multiple other geopolitical issues—something we have ample evidence for. I don't know if there is a smoking gun on this one topic in particular, but the CCP's goal has always been to divide the American audience; and we know that older Americans skew pro-Israel whilst younger Americans are more oriented towards being pro-Palestinian. If someone looked in the right places, they would more likely than not find evidence of algorithm manipulation to favor a Palestinian bend.

> something we have ample evidence for

Can you share some of that evidence? My impression from the SCOTUS case is that the government only alleged it could happen, not that it was happening. So I’m a bit surprised to see someone so confidently assert it is happening.

> more likely than not find evidence of algorithm manipulation

I think a lot of people have been looking. For years. Yet you admit there is no smoking gun. Perhaps if we look in the right place we will find Russell’s teapot orbiting Jupiter as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

At the very least, wages for the average citizen. It’s not perfect but at least there’s movement towards building something. What is the US building towards? Enriching billionaires?

More organs harvested from political prisoners.

Ah yes, the US known for putting people in prisons where we use techniques the Nazis developed as part of our “enhanced interrogation”.

USA is totally way better than China here!

I'd like to see that evidence too, hopefully for more than one instance/source.

IMO, it's been obvious that the danger seen in TikTok is that it's a propaganda tool out of USA's control. If it was really a national security danger, USA could simply ban it instead of fighting so hard to own it.

There’s probably not one single benchmark (and I won’t say that all of them are negative in the US) but we can just think generally about the things we’d like in a good life:

Life expectancy. Chronic disease rates. Suicide rates. Depression rates. Violent crime rates. Marriage rates. Home ownership rates. Education rates. Debt rates. Labor participation rates. Wealth inequity.

No one metric is a complete picture but together they tell a story. If America was a product and the above was on a dashboard, you would fire the CEO.

So, we have proof of a strong algorithm manipulation by Israel on the entire family of main US social media (those used by the older segment of the population); and yet you still manage to point your finger to a hypothetical, unproved manipulation of the algorithm on the competitors' social media to explain the difference in attitude between generations? But you have the answer here, there has been manipulation of the social media consumed by the older segment!

Where do you think the servers that power TikTok in the United States are? Who do you think administers those servers?

I have no idea. I worked on the team at Apple that deployed Apple Maps across the globe and China was very different than other countries. South Korea had some interesting requirements as well. I've not worked on that team at TikTok and wouldn't expect the knowledge of the exact requirements to be shared publicly.

Comparing apples to oranges works surprisingly well if they are rotten enough?

50th vs 70th

https://index.goodcountry.org/

Both the US and China score surprisingly bad on everything listed here.

I do prefer the way janalsncm described quality of life.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43659542

Is there an index for those some place?

Homeless population

We find in mainstream media a pro Israel bend. We also find the same in US companies. Manipulation? Yes

> something we have ample evidence for.

Please show this "ample evidence" because it seems you (or "we" - whoever that is) have something the rest of the world doesn't.

Anyone who has visited China 25 years ago, and visited today, wouldn't argue that quality of life has not improved as a whole.

As for America, it is very debatable.

FWIW, the dashboard idea...was on the 2020 Presidential Candidate. Andrew Yang's platform.

Years of salary to purchase home. Life expectancy. Obesity rates. Overall life satisfaction surveys. Loneliness rates. Suicide rate.

I could go on.

“AI” avatars. Totally gonna make the world a better place.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43626707

Who is we?

Americans

Where’s the proof? Facebook agreeing to take down some contents that violates its policies is hardly proof of anything.

it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it were being manipulated, but we know for absolute certain facebooks sites and twitter are manipulated.

we should be looking to stop all manipulation, whether from a state or billionaires. this kind of manipulation is awful no matter what the source is.

i have a hard time understanding why so many are terrified of tiktok yet turn around and seem eager to suck from twitter or facebook’s firehose.

70% of these metrics are solved in China (or most places in Asia) through methods that most people in this thread would be vehemently against. You can put the mentally-ill back into sanatoriums, enforce quick and draconian response to petty crime, and pay an economic underclass a pittance to clean your streets if you wish.

Unfortunately for Americans, it's not the CEO at fault here actually, it's the middle class and left-leaning/progressive that are directly responsible for many of the problems here. The funny thing is that Republican Party being in complete power with Trump would be more similar to the CCP than the Democrats or Progressives. Suppressing dissenting voices like Pro-Palestine in order to force national homogenity is a big part of that.

And I say this as someone who supported Biden and Kamala, but these left-wingers or libertarians who are so vehemtly opposed to the US Gov but then simp for China are just being childishly incoherent.

The proof is supplied by the article: "Multiple independent sources inside Meta confirmed the authenticity of the information provided by the whistleblowers. The data also show that Meta removed over 90,000 posts to comply with TDRs submitted by the Israeli government in an average of 30 seconds." 90k take-down requests in 18 months is quite a lot.

Most americans support Israel in this conflict. Maybe the samples are just biased?

> enforce quick and draconian response to petty crime

In the Bay Area the median response to petty crime is zero consequences for the criminal. This is because in practice criminals are not caught or punished.

If the cost of having laws enforced is that we need better surveillance (read: more security cameras) then guess what? We are already heavily surveilled.

You don't have to look that hard—there have been several independent groups who have noted different ways in which the algorithm is skewed pro-CCP:

https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-...

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/social-psychology/artic...

Proof of takedowns is not proof of algorithm manipulation.

But it is proof of manipulation.

The study you linked doesn’t have a control group, which is a fairly fundamental oversight. In other words, it can’t answer the question of whether all negative political content is down ranked or just Chinese political content.

Current polls say 53% of Americans disapprove of Israel’s actions, and 38% say it is genocide.

Regarding your specific claim, here’s the most recent poll I could find. In june, 61% of Americans opposed sending military support: https://theintercept.com/2024/09/10/polls-arms-embargo-israe...

Does authoritarianism and over policing cause their QoL to rise while ours is debatable? Their middle class is rising, ours is nearly dead. Their years of salary to purchase a home is decreasing, ours is almost a full lifetime. We have more people per capita in prison than they do. We have rising obesity rates. Rising chronic illness rates. We are now surveiling our own populations social media to find reasons to kick them out just like they do.

So please let me know how locking up more people and paying an economic underclass to clean our streets will help us achieve all those goals? Crime, I get it, but how is what you claimed going to solve our health and financial issues?

So what if they do this though? Big so what? Americans are allowed to read any journal and any news, even those explicitly owned and edited by foreign adversaries that they want. This is a tried and true first amendment right. And I get that forcing China to divest TikTok isn't legally an act against the 1st Amendment, but functionally it is. Why can't Americans see a CCP-biased view of Palestine if they want to? If I want to watch CCP propaganda all day, or Press TV, or Russia Today, that's my right as an American. Part of the reason there's interest to see that at all and 0 interest in watching a CCP revisionist history of the Korean War is because Israel can only bomb so many WCK aid workers, Red Cross aid workers, ambulances with the sirens on, in full video, etc. before people become curious about why this isn't a big deal for our govt.

Not true at all. Talk to the average American, not an extremist of either side, and they want Israel to defend themselves and stop demanding billions from us then talking down to us and telling themselves we are easy to trick into giving them full support and money whenever they want